1977 COR!! Comic
Annual cost £1 and had 144 pages.
Strips and features: Willy
Worry (4 episodes, one in full colour), Give A Dog A Bone (6 episodes, one in full colour),
Ivor Lott and Tony Broke (3 episodes,
two in full colour), Gus Gorilla (3
episodes), The Return of Spooky-Spokes (6 pages), Soldier Spoon (4 episodes), Footbal Madd
(2 episodes by Les Barton + 1 reprint from an old COR!! weekly), Whacky (2 episodes, one in full colour),
Hire A Horror (4 Reg Parlett reprints
from old COR!! weeklies), Teacher’s Pet,
Tricky Dicky, Jelly Baby (2 episodes), Donovan’s
Dad (two episodes, one in full colour), Party
‘Spot The Changes’ puzzle, The
Gasworks Gang (two new episodes by Frank McDiarmid), The Slimms (three episodes, one signed by Terry Bave), Tomboy (2 episodes), Night Mare (2 episodes by Les Barton), Gus Gags (6 pages), Jasper the Grasper (by Alf Saporito), Hugh Reka (2 episodes), Jack Pott (2 episodes), Andy’s Ants (2 episodes), “Young” MacDonald
and his Farm, Snow
‘Spot the Changes’ puzzle, Tease Break puzzles, Teacher’s Pet, Val’s Vanishing
Cream (signed by Terry Bave), Tricky
Dicky, Fiends and Neighbours (4 pages signed by Tom Paterson).
There were two one-offs in the Annual:
The Return of Spooky-Spokes was a detective comedy strip starring an invisible poltergeist,
formerly known as the fiendish Ponsonby Prenderghast, and a spook detective,
formerly the world-famous detective Deadlock “Spooky” Spokes. They team up with
Arnold Twinge, the friendly Neighbourhood Detective, and round up a gang of
jewellery shop robbers. Here are the opening two pages:
Hugh Reka was a tale
about a boy who had a knack for inventions. In the two episodes included in the Annual he experimented with his ‘grow little’ and ‘grow big’ powders. Here are
both episodes from the Annual side by side:
IPC in-house artists had become quite good at cutting up old COR!! artwork, resizing panels and
constructing two-pagers out of original one-pagers. Give a Dog a Bone and Hire
A Horror stories have been definitely tampered with and there are a
few more that may have been re-shuffled as well (The Slimms, Willy Worry, Tricky
Dicky). The rest are all original pages, as far as I can tell. Here
are two examples of new sets by Les Barton:
I am a bit confused as to who illustrated Jasper
the Grasper and Gus Gorilla in this Annual. Was it still
Alf Saporito? The style looks somewhat different
from the previous years. Here is the last page of Jasper the Grasper and
one episode of Gus Gorilla side by side (I believe both were by the
same artist):
Finally, here is a 4-page treat of Fiends
and Neighbours drawn and signed by Tom Paterson:
Thanks for all the great posts about the Cor!! Annuals. I've been trying to remember the one Annual that I purchased as a child at a garage sale in the 80s & have long since mislaid. The images you posted here for the 1977 ring bells, but if you could tell me whether or not Young MacDonald uses mechanical moles to catch up on his potato harvesting duties in the included strip I would be ever so grateful :)
ReplyDeleteThe episode of Young MacDonald with mechanical moles is indeed in Cor!! 1977 Annual. A detailed blogpost covering all episodes of Young MacDonald and his Farm will be up in a couple of weeks time or so :)
DeleteBrilliant! Thank-you for the speedy reply. Your posts are great, & I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of them. Keep up the great work.
DeleteDo we know who the artist for Jelly Baby in this annual was? I always thought that it might be Dave Eastbury, who draw Ball Boy and Freddie Fear in the Beano during the 2000's.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I don't know for sure but you may very well be right!
Delete